Why should I stick with this frustrating hobby?!

[Barnzy02]

Eh, you can only convince yourself it's worth it to keep at it.

Best thing i found, is if you're pouring into a bucket. Get a mesh bag that fits the lip of your bucket, put bag in bucket, pour wort into bucket, pull out mesh bag with all your hop and trub goo. Done and Done.

 

[Brulosopher]

Today I attempted to brew my fourth batch ever. It was am imperial hefiwietsen or however you spell it.. Everything was going perfectly until I had to pour my wort into my brew bucket. I had my brew bucket filter on to filter out the hops. I've done this twice before and I've never had a problem. But today the stupid filter comes undone and splashes wort all over my kitchen. So then I dump half of the wort that is now in the brew bucket back into the boiler pot to try it again. Probably contaminating the $@"! out of it as I'm doing this. I try it again being as slow as possible and it does it again!!! Wort everywhere, it's a mess. I'm guessing I lost about anywhere from 1/2 to a full gallon of wort. So I say screw this and I just filter what I can and dump the wort in fill it up to 5 gallons and pitch the yeast. Probably a $:;- tone of hops that weren't filtered out. To make maters worse, I was sold less liquid yeast that I needed for this kit. So I was forced to pitch with one dry yeast packet and one large liquid packet of wyeast. I pour the liquid yeast in and then I notice the little packet inside was never ruptured!!! I swear I smacked the crap out of it and no, I didn't make starter.

I have been working on beer related stuff since 10:30am it's now 4:30! This sucks so hard to put so much freaking work in and was a perfectly beautiful day outside. Not to mention the close $70 I spent on this stupid kit! I'm sorry if I sound angry but this is so frustrating!

Yeah! That's why I use hop sacks and pumps

 

[Homercidal]

Meh. Your beer will be fine. Frustrating, but in the end I highly doubt what happened will cause any problems. Have another beer and watch the news. You'll soon realize now small your troubles are.

 

[mjohnson]

I think you should quit and take up golf.

 

[james138]

Thanks for the info! My beer is,bubbling a lot. I don't have blow off tube I just have an airlock on top of my brew bucket. Is there a chance that the lid will pop off?

Also does anybody links where I could by these hop socks? I'm guessing I can just get the 5 gallon paint strainers at Lowes or HD.

 

[mikemet]

Thanks for the info! My beer is,bubbling a lot. I don't have blow off tube I just have an airlock on top of my brew bucket. Is there a chance that the lid will pop off?

Also does anybody links where I could by these hop socks? I'm guessing I can just get the 5 gallon paint strainers at Lowes or HD.

At your LHBS - AKA muslim bags.

 

[unionrdr]

"You'll be back Rogatanski! You're hooked Max...& you know it! People said they didn't believe in beer anymore. Well,you & me Max...we're gunna give'em back their brewers!"!! Any LHBS has muslin hop socks & grain socks. I even use the grain socks for raw hops,as 1 ounce of those has a much greater volume. Ya just have to find something about brewing that'll light the ol' fire again.

 

[Brewsncrabs]

Don't you dare quit or I will find you and..... help you. First, buy a hop bag or hop spider and stop worrying about all the junk in the fermenter. It won't hurt. I use a bag, with a few extra hops since your utilization may drop. I use 2 per batch depending how many ounces of hops. I get almost no crap on the bottom of the kettle.

 

[HookUp]

Relax...This is a hobby and supposed to be relaxing and enjoyable.

Ditto.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

All hobbies take time & effort & have a learning curve.

If you're not comfortable in the kitchen, and aren't having fun, maybe you took up the wrong hobby?

Only you can answer that.

I'd take the advise above, relax, try again and then determine if you were just having a bad day.

 

[Smashing]

Welcome to the bad day club! I've had everything happen from failed equipment, knocked over buckets and just last week - hot mash and 2nd degree burns on my hands! I've learned to simplify my day as much as possible. I use hop bags for my boil kettle and fermentors. I built a permanent brew stand so I can stop using boards and cinder blocks to put things on. One great tip I got was to write all your brewing steps down so you don't have to go from memory. Helps to budget your time and decrease stress. One other thing, No beer until the boil is done. I consider it a celebration to enjoy a beer while I cool my brew. Consider it chillin while I chill.

 

[tknice]

I have 10 gallons of "band-aid" beer- my first ever totally ruined batch. I haven't dumped it yet, but I'm going to have to as it's undrinkable. I can pin down what happened (at least, I think so!) and avoid that in the future. At least, I can count it as a learning experience.

I typically don't filter my wort, but leaf hops clog up my system so I started bagging them recently. I don't worry about pellet hops as they go right through just fine. I also don't worry about break material or other stuff, as it'll all settle out in the end with the spent yeast as trub.

Meh, pour some neosporin in there, I'm sure it will be fine.

j/k sorry to hear that happened Yooper.

Hopefully the OP will see from this thread that we all have this happen from time to time. I've brewed my house pale ale lots of times and did three things last weekend that I had to facepalm.

a quick example... I doughed in at my mash-out temp! how's that for an oops (luckily I had enough room for cold water to bring it back down).

For me at least, most things get chalked up to distractions.. so much so that my wife's friends show up on brew day and ask: "Are you tknice or tk-NOT-nice today??" haha

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

Waking up very early to find a very angry, very purple raccoon thrashing around in a towel covered must bucket, almost made me give it up years ago. Sometimes there are rough days, but its worth it.

That's f'n hilarious!!

James, RDW bro, and HAHB or a CB or whatever makes you happy. Brewing'll get easier and the beer'll get better.